The Next Giant Leap

Later a woman told me the sensation of weightlessness was “familiar—I have flying dreams all the time.” She was, in fact, like Neil Armstrong, who once described the following recurring dream: “I could, by holding my breath, hover over the ground. Nothing much happened. I neither flew nor fell in those dreams; I just hovered.”

I had passed my own test. I’d flown the Vomit Comet on no sleep, hungover, full of oysters and stew, hung my hide out over the yawning abyss, and come back. Strapped in again, my neurologist neighbor said, “You must have an iron stomach. And I’m glad to see you wore a helmet. There’s a lot of potential for injury here.” Aunt Glen would have been proud.

*By the way, I made that FUR one up. I asked Morcone for the technical name and she responded, “I’m on it.…” But not long after, she told me, “Sorry to disappoint you, but the urine-collection hose is officially called the urine receptacle. It does not have a special name/adapter for male/female.”

sean wilseyis the author of a memoir, Oh the Glory of It All. He is at work on a book about NASA (and would like to go into space).